Would a micro-time subscription work for a MMOG? I've been thinking about a blended mix between the subscription model and the micro-credits model that’s normally teamed with a free2play game. Just for people who might not know, a subscription game would be the likes of World of Warcraft which costs around $15 per/month to keep your account active so you can log in and play on their servers. A micro-credits system normally teams with a free2play game which anyone can download and start playing for free but by spending small amounts of real life currency ($5, $10, $15...) your able to buy a special in-game currency to spend on restricted items that enhance your overall game playing experience. Personally I've always preferred to go the way of subscriptions over micro-credits. The games I've played using the micro-credits system make buying their in-game currency a must if you truly wish to experience the full game. I think everyone, more so in an online competitive game, should be equals and not allow for players investing more money into the game to automatically be better/stronger. So I wonder if instead of offering in-game currency for small payments people could buy small game time amounts for decreased prices? Example: $5 for 80 Hours I've tried to take into consideration why this system might be effective. - Besides gold farmers no-one plays 24/7 so people now would only pay for hours that they use. - Discounts could be offered to players who buy larger time amounts to reward buying in bulk. - Cheaper options allow "kids" the opportunity to play who depend on parents to pay for them while still limiting them to the parents chosen time limit. So please tell me what you think is good or bad about a micro-time subscription. Thanks

It might work, nobody knows, but I think it'll be less popular then the other two models.

With subscriptions, players tend to forget about it and take the game for granted. Even when inactive, the subscription goes on. Cancelling it takes an effort.

With free to play, players can play whether they want to spend money or not. It takes no effort to get into the game. The more money a player spends on his characters, the less likely he is to quit.

With your suggestion (let's call it "prepaid"), the player has to spend money to get into the game. Each time his prepaid hours run out, he has to make a decision to spend money to buy more hours.

Secondly, players already invest a lot of time into these games. Many players don't like to be reminded of this. With the prepaid system, players are constantly reminded on how much time and money they spend.

Maybe the prepaid system is better suited for games where you don't have to invest a lot of time in building your character. I.e. FPSes...

I'm pretty sure that there are games that utilise this sort of subscription system.
I think I remember reading about an MMO a while ago that did anyway.

Either way I prefer the buying of game time over buying time in which you can play the game. Or in less confusing words, I prefer to pay only for the time that I use and not for the time period I am allowed to play in. However you would have to do a bit of testing to get the pricing right, because some people will go through small amounts of game time quickly.

For example a guy I knew in high school managed in a 3 month period to rack up 1 month of game time in WoW, and that was during school and some school holidays (2 weeks were school holidays of that). So he was averaging 8 hours a day.

If prices were tweaked appropriately I think this is a very good model to use for subscription games, better than using a game credit model or a time model (as in 1 month of time, not game time), given that you only pay for the time that you play.

It all depends on how casually people play, the more casual someone is about MMO's then the more likely they will like this model.

I see the problem with having to manually bill your card when your time runs out. I'm sure it would be easy enough to run a similar system to just linking a credit card with your account but instead of being billed at the end of your month the game tracks your played hours. When your final hour expires your next lot of hours gets billed to your card and I guess you could have a default plan selected during sign up so its done nice and easy.

Your right about tweaking the pricing but I think even looking at that example you would be shocked to find that for $5 you get 80 hours worth of playing time, its the equivalent of $15 working out too 240 hours which averages for 8 hours a day in a 30 day month.

I think of the Micro-time subscriptions working like internet plans do. Some people pay more because they download more but others get the same speeds and pay less because it’s what suits their needs.

Think of it like cellphone usage with roll over minutes.

You would generally pay a given amount at the start of every month, but then pick how much you want to buy. Your minutes from last month roll over to the new. Your account tracks your usage patterns, and warns you when you're running low on game hours. You can buy more at anytime, and when you do it will use your game play history as well as the game play history of all other users to present you with graphs to help pick how many months a given rate will last.

The key is reminders and usage tracking. If they're starting to burn through the hours faster than usual, make sure the user knows. Never let them run out of time while playing.

You may even wish to include Customer Loyalty Credit Points. Meaning if you accidentally run out while playing, you can keep playing, and it will just let you pay for them the next time you top off your account with pre-paid hours. How long you can play before it actually boots you off would depend on just how long you've been a customer. It won't charge your card anything, but you will have to pay for them before you can buy more hours.

I'm playing Perfect World International currently. It is a free game with a cash shop. I haven't found it necessary at all to buy cash, because the game's cash currency can be sold for game currency within the game, and cash-bought items can also be sold within the game. It's not difficult to earn enough game currency to buy cash items, just takes a while compared to the instant-ness of buying them with cash. Actually I wish PWI had more cash items for sale, their range is pretty small and inconsistent between character genders and classes; also the pricing is not really consistent among the various items. Also for a free game I'm amazed at the lack of spammers and bots in PWI.

I'm also fine with subscription games as long as they have a free trial. I don't think I'd really be interested in micro-subscriptions; games like Dofus which have a big population of non-subscribers at any time become obnoxious, it would be very irritating to be in a guild where people tended to let their subscriptions run out and not renew them until they had to.

One thing I might be interested in is a subscription that got used up by minutes of time logged in, rather than monthly regardless of how much time you played. A Tale in the Desert's trial period works this way, it is 24 hours of logged-in time, distributed over as many days as you want. But, with that kind of a system I'd be even more unhappy that I already am about quests which are designed to waste the player's time in long journeys.

"Think of it like cell phone usage with roll over minutes." - Yeah that's a perfect definition.

@Talroth-

Your right about tracking the hours and making sure the players have enough time to properly organise themselves for the next billing. Again this is similar to ISP sending e-mails letting you know how much download limit you've used up but integrating a better system would be a must. The Customer Loyalty system you mention works, Xbox Live uses this system. Currently I still have a Gold subscription that I haven't paid for yet because it auto-renewed without my knowing and tried to bill an expired VISA but I've still been able to play without any interruption of service. The Microsoft system works exactly how you described.

@sunandshadow-

PWI seems to be another free2play game using the micro-credits system in the right way. I'm currently playing Battle Field Heroes and its micro-credit payments are similar, only offering cosmetic changes or boosts for players wanting to max level faster then others. I too think any subscription game without a decent trial period is a mistake. I think any aspect of a game that focuses on being a "time-sink" is annoying and such a game most likely wouldn't opt for this type of subscription.

I guess a lot of it comes down to how players spend their money as well. I know most popular subscriptions are around the $15 mark and most entry level micro-credit amounts are to the likes of $5 for X amount of in-game currency.

How would you personally spend your $15?

a) On a 1-Month subscription for your desired game.
b) On X amount of In-Game currency to boost/spend on your characters,

OR

c) On X amount of In-Game playing time for your desired game.

Please take the time to respond with either a), b) or c) if nothing else.

Thanks again

I've read that World of Warcraft used to have pay-by-hour for around 4 US cents per hour. Not sure if it's a good model though. It sure works if you don't have any competitive offers, such as WoW in China (...used to have), or if it's just a secondary market you target (the same source mentioned that China contributes about 50% of subscribers, but only 15% of the revenue).

Personally, I'd rather aim at the 40-60 hour than the 375+ hour market with such a model. Monthly subscriptions are a good thing (for the game maintainer), as they are much more reliable and bring in regular money.
So maybe one could sell 60 hours at the same rate as a monthly subscription, which would be benefitial to the people who only play 3 hours on saturday afternoon, and which would get you these people as customers.

@sunandshadow:
"One thing I might be interested in is a subscription that got used up by minutes of time logged in, rather than monthly regardless of how much time you played."

Errr... That is what the "micro-time" (properly called a game time system) system that is being discussed is, you purchase game time as opposed to paying for a period in which you can play, so you pay for say 10 hours, that is 10 hours that you are logged in for, not 10 hours in which you can play, so that 10 hours will last you for a while until your have spent 10 hours playing the game.

Of course you would have to sell decent amounts of time otherwise it would be annoying to the end user to rebill all the time, or give them the option for either simple rebilling that can be done quickly, not automatic billing though.

If I was considering making an MMO then I would most likely use this model.

I reminded of mobile phones by this idea.

I've currently got a pay as you go mobile phone which means I pay no monthly fee instead I buy as much talk credit as I want and when that runs out I have to buy more to call people.

The same idea which you are talking about for MMO games could work just as well for casual users. As it would appeal to the people who only want to play for the odd half hour or couple hours here and there.

However you do introduce the idea of cut off. Since I imagine I would get logged off as soon as my credit runs out. Getting cut off in the middle of a quest or import task would frustrate most gamers.

Lastly as most MMO work on a time sink and diminishing returns design. In other words you have to invest a greater amount of time as the game progress to get a smaller reward then you did previously. You’d have to design your MMO in very different way so that it would offer something to attract the casual player.